Browse Forums Home Theatre & Automation 1 Jan 20, 2010 8:59 pm Hey, I was wondering if anyone here has implemented a SAN into their home network? If so, what equipment do you have running? Cheers, bigred Re: Has anyone implemented a SAN into their home network? 2Jan 20, 2010 10:25 pm Hi BigRed, SANs at home are out of most peoples reach and or needs. Do you really want a Storage Area Network (SAN) or are you looking at setting up some form of Network Attached Storage (NAS)? A few of my peers at work are running NAS devices at home and I can collate their input if you would like? I gather you would be looking at using a 1G network to support your NAS devices? Do you have and special needs other than ofloading your storage requirements to a shared device? SinkOrSwim Re: Has anyone implemented a SAN into their home network? 3Jan 21, 2010 11:07 am I run a HFS and not a dedicated NAS as such....... i had to look up what a SAN is... and it still has me bemused... mine is a simple set up running XP Pro and atm 6 x 1TB HD'sjust using windows sharing to get the files to my HTPC and notebook from what I've seen of the SAN from wikapedia it looks awefully converluted. this is my HFS set up. MB: Intel D915GAG CPU: Pentium 4 530 775 RAM: 2 x 512mb Legend DDR400 NIC: Intel PRO 1000CT OS: XP Pro SP3 32Bit HD 1: WD 80GB HD IDE HD 2 -5: 4 x WD 1TB HD SATA II HD 6 & 7 + Controller: 2 x 1TB WD SATA II + Sunix 2100 Case: CM 334 PSU: CM Extreme Power Plus 550w cost me around $1000 to set up Kodiak Data Cabling onFaceBook Consult*, Design and Installation Data, TV, Home Theatre/ AV Cabling, Multi Room Audio, IP CCTV and Door Intercoms Ask for a Quote. *DIY DATA Cabling Is Ilegal Re: Has anyone implemented a SAN into their home network? 4Jan 21, 2010 11:57 am Hi Bigred, U sure you really need a SAN in your house, your talking enterprise level storage there. Do you really need the ability to scale into the 100's of terabytes and at 10gBE or fibrechannel links? You could spend a substantial portion of the cost of a house setting up a SAN. Just for kicks, here's a product link to a dell san for SMB http://www1.ap.dell.com/content/products/category.aspx/sanet_fibre?c=au&l=en&s=bsd As the others have mentioned, i'm also going to assume you mean a NAS (Network attached storage) vs (Storage Area Network). They're a good space saving alternative to running a dedicated file server. These days with a mid spec unit (unit cost $400-1000 + hdd costs) 5x1TB raid 5 arrays are within reach and in a form factor the size of a toaster. Sure you can go 2TB discs with most units but imo 1TB is still a good crossover point between storage capacity, hardware evolution and failure rates. In terms of the NAS itself depending on exactly what you want it to do will really determine how much you spend. Do you purely want file storage,backup or the ability to stream content, act as a ftp server, photo server, stream video etc? The 3 main players in this segment are Thecus, Buffalo and Qnap. They all do the same basic things, some are prettier than others and the specific features do vary between them. I'll declare i have a little self interest as i deal with Thecus units, but i'll use them as the examples as its what i'm most familiar with. http://www.thecus.com/index.php?set_language=english Now aside from the fact that like Pugs i run my own file server which is only as its my old gaming pc, if i was looking at a nas currently i'd be looking at the N4100PRO or its soon to be available replacement the N4200. Or in a cheaper option i'd look at the N3200PRO. Those options your looking at 3 or 4 bays, reasonable performance, gigabit ethernet , raid, platform independence, good stability and they're quite easy to get your head around. Like most nas there are a few quirks that tend to be specific to the manufacturer but its usually due to the differences in how they've implemented features. If you've got some more specific requirements as to what your looking to do with the unit, it will help to narrow down the options. Our Build - Places Fairhaven 23+ - https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=28045 Our Landscaping - Belial's Backyard - https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=45375 Re: Has anyone implemented a SAN into their home network? 5Jan 22, 2010 1:08 pm I'm a big fan of the QNAP range of NASes as a decent media streamer. Though as the poster above mentioned, if you just want plain storage + file server then there are cheaper options. Do a google for QNAP and you'll see some of the funky stuff they can do - mostly though its just a low spec linux box with great power consumption and a nice form factor. From a user perspective, the big difference between a NAS and a SAN is the level of abstraction. A user connecting to a NAS will be aware they're connecting to a remote disk, as opposed to a user using a SAN where the location of the disk appears to be local and the space on many disks are often consolidated. That said, you can do a lot of similar stuff at a higher level with a NAS anyway (i.e. mounting a remote location as a disk drive). Re: Has anyone implemented a SAN into their home network? 6Feb 06, 2010 4:27 pm We have a Thecus N7700 Pro as a NAS. We have Windows 7 on all our home machines and use Windows Home Server to set daily backups to the NAS. We have quite a few SANs at work, that we use to hold modelling data. Our SAN holds 45TB and has dedicated 2GB cabling to the Dell server, we have 40 odd scientists creating data. I think you might have your acronyms confused. Re: Has anyone implemented a SAN into their home network? 7Feb 15, 2010 2:55 pm I'm gonna be a bit of a Devil's advocate and ask to think in the opposite direction: What do you really need it for? We have a computer/access device in every major room at home connected with gigabit capable cabling (12 points), and even we don't find the need to have storage on 24/7 (I've tried justifying it once or twice ). If we really need something on another computer we tend to just turn in on, pull it through, and switch it back off again. Sneaker net gets a bit of a workout too if we really need big throughput . I've had my own file server running for a while and found that other than occasionally doing the backups, all it did was consume power. If I could somehow justify it, I'd probably go Qnap. They have a reputation for doing exactly what they say they will. Re: Has anyone implemented a SAN into their home network? 8Mar 23, 2010 9:44 am I'm fairly certain you mean NAS not SAN. I'm a network admin and SANs are tyically for high bandwidth storage attached to servers.. our recent ugprade cost us $2M and was by no means a top of the range setup At home I've traditionally had a fairly big PC acting as a NAS or file server running 8 drives and filling multiple roles. I'm moving away from this now as it's just such a power hog. There are so many good light-weight NAS units now such as the QNAP TS-210 that a dedicated PC file server is not really suitable for me, or I'd imagine most others. The great thing about the QNAP series is all the extra features, both included and also available through the excellent community online. Re: Has anyone implemented a SAN into their home network? 9Mar 23, 2010 12:04 pm Hi there, I would assume you require a NAS. Even if you are getting into home labs and virtulization (e.g. Vmware) most good NAS units will be able to cope with things such as shared storage ISCSI, NFS etc.... I used to run a big home lab and am now shutting everything down mainly because of two reasons. 1. Power! - Cost of power is going up so much its just not worth running IT gear 24/7 2. Cooling - SAN's require appropriate cooling - Hard drives can only operate under good and consistent temperature. large fluctuation in temperature usually tend to kill hard drives. So i would suggest going towards the NAS route. Something along the lines of ReadyNAS or a QNAP etc... should suite you well. More than enough storage. If you are looking for backup / redundancy. I would strong recommend you look at online storage such as Amazon S3 etc... Good luck! Hi, I am planning to select San Selmo reclaimed original for the fascade of my build. 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